FREDEGARIUS, Scholasticus: the date of his birth, death, and country are uncertain. He was the author of a chronicle, which abridges the history of Gregory of Tours, and continues it to the year 641. The particularity with which he dwells on the affairs of Burgundy, lead to the belief that it was his country. The parts of his work that are not mere abridgments of Gregory of Tours, have been reprinted in all the great collections of French historians.—J. A., D.
FREDEGONDA, born about 545, wife of Chilperic I., who ruled the kingdom of Neustria in the sixth century, had occupied for many years a prominent position among his concubines. Of ignoble birth, and introduced into his household as one of the attendants of his first queen, Andowera, she united to her personal charms an ambitious temper and an insinuating address, by which she weaned the affections of the monarch from her mistress, who was ere long repudiated and exiled. His subsequent marriage to Galswintha, daughter of Athanagildas, produced only a temporary suspension of her influence; and after the gentle Visigothic princess was found smothered in her bed, the crime was naturally traced to the unprincipled and aspiring favourite, whom Chilperic hastened to acknowledge as his lawful consort and queen of Neustria in 567. Serious political evils followed this act. Sigebert of Austrasia, who had married Brunehaut, the sister of Galswintha, invaded the Neustrian territories, and the success which attended his arms, along with the odium which Chilperic had provoked among his own subjects, drove the latter from his throne. He recovered his position, however, by the assistance of Guntram of Burgundy; Sigebert fell at Vitry under the knives of assassins hired by Fredegonda; Brunehaut taken prisoner was placed in confinement at Rouen and her infant son Childebert was with difficulty rescued by Gundobald, duke of Campania, to be proclaimed king at Metz by the Austrasian nobles. Merovæus or Merowig, the heir whom Andowera had borne to Chilperic, compassionating the misfortunes of Brunehaut, and captivated by her charms, married her, and raised her standard against his father. But a succession of disasters attended his enterprise, and the snares which were laid for him by Fredegonda, drove him in despair to seek death at the hand of his servant Gaïlen. Prætextatus, bishop of Rouen, who had solemnized his marriage with the widow of Sigebert, also experienced the enmity of her implacable rival; he was degraded and exiled to an island on the coast, from which he escaped some years later, only to perish by assassins at the instigation of Fredegonda. Meanwhile, the loss of the sons whom she had borne to Chilperic, notwithstanding the grief and apparent contrition which it produced, was used as the occasion of sweeping from her path the only surviving son of Andowera, whom she accused of having poisoned them; and in 584 Chilperic himself perished under circumstances which cast a dark suspicion on his profligate consort. It is painful to trace further the record of her numerous crimes. After the death of Chilperic she continued to maintain her power in Neustria as regent for her infant son Clotaire till 597, when she died, while prosecuting a new war with Brunehaut, who then ruled Austrasia and Burgundy in the name of her children, Theodebert and Theoderic.—W. B.
FREDERICK: the emperors, kings, and princes of this name are here inserted under the names of their respective countries, in the following order:—1. Germany; 2. Prussia; 3. Denmark and Sweden; 4. Italy.
I. GERMANY.
Frederick I., the second emperor of Germany belonging to the house of the Hohenstaufen, and called by the Italians Barbarossa, from the colour of his beard, was born in 1121. In 1147 he succeeded his father in the duchy of Suabia, and on the death of his uncle, Conrad III, was elected emperor; a dignity representing certain indefinite and ever-contested claims over both Italy and Germany. Well and strongly built, both in body and in soul of the true Teutonic type, and for his time, excellently educated, he bore and wore all nature's symbols prophetic of the great part that he was to play. He had already had many opportunities of proving his prowess and political skill, when the elevation to the imperial throne in 1152 summoned him to a wider field. So far as Italy was concerned, he determined that authority should be something more than the shadowy thing which it had been under some of the preceding emperors. There were potent and plenteous elements of resistance; yet when Frederick, having passed the Alps in 1154, descended into the plains of Roncaglia, submission was all but universal. Whenever any hesitation was shown to admit his sway, punishment was prompt and overwhelming. The recalcitrant cities, Chieri, Asti, and Tortona, were destroyed. On his way to Rome, Frederick seized the famous religious agitator Arnold of Brescia, and on reaching that city delivered him to Pope Adrian IV., who commanded him to be burned, and his ashes to be thrown into the Tiber, lest, as was said, they should be gathered as relics by the superstitious populace. Frederick was crowned at Rome by the pope on the 18th of June, 1155. On his return to Germany he displayed the most marvellous activity in putting an end to civil war and brigandage, and in carrying out his object he punished the Count-palatine Hermann and a few others in a mode sufficiently curious; they were condemned to carry a dog for a mile. In 1157 he was successful in the hostilities which he waged against Boleslaus the king of Poland. An explosion of national sentiment in Italy, and the intrigues of the pope, compelled him to undertake in 1158 a second Italian expedition. The cities which resisted soon repented, and were not long in yielding. Milan had to bow its proud head, and to pay nine thousand marks. A diet was assembled at Roncaglia to determine the rights of the empire, at which it was declared that the will of the emperor was the law of the people. To demonstrate and confirm this declaration Frederick burned Crema. The death of Pope Adrian IV. brought serious complications into Italian affairs. The imperialist cardinals elected Victor III. as Adrian's successor; the friends of independence chose Alexander III., whom the emperor had denounced as schismatical. Milan, which had already rebelled, showed little disposition to be quietly the slave of the emperor. It flung its defiance at him, and the emperor resolved to besiege it. The Milanese displayed the grandest heroism, but in 1162 famine subdued them. Compelled to surrender at discretion, these noble souls, divided into a hundred detachments, with ropes round their necks and crosses in their hands, laid down their banners at the feet of the emperor, broke their caroccio, the symbol of liberty—life was all that was left—and in a body they were driven into exile. Their magnificent city was given up to destruction, to the fierce vengeance of a brutal soldiery. The Milanese scattered through every part of Italy, roused against the emperor a fierce anger. The discontented cities joined the adherents of the popular Pope Alexander III. In the autumn of 1163, the emperor having gone for a season to Germany was once more in Italy; but he saw that with the troops at his command he could achieve nothing against his enemies. He therefore in 1164 went to Germany to raise an army; but it was not till 1166 that he entered on his fourth expedition to Italy. His foes put his absence to profit. Alexander III. entered Rome in triumph, and was recognized as the champion of independence. A league, called the Lombard League, was formed to break the iron yoke of imperial oppression. But Frederick with his large army found no serious obstacle on his march to Rome; he installed a new pope in the Vatican, and Alexander III. was forced to fly. But the storm of rebellion gathered darkly behind him, every city conspired. The Italian climate, so often fatal to the men of the north, aided the daring schemes of the confederate cities. The mareraman fever of the month of August broke out in the army of Frederick, and slew more than a great battle would have slain. Having with difficulty reached Pavia, through the dead and the dying, it was with still more difficulty that he escaped across the Alps. Frederick found work enough in the troubled and turbulent state of Germany to detain him for several years. But the burning of Susa in 1174, announced in awful language to the Lombard cities the emperor's fifth expedition to Italy. The new town of Alessandria, so slightly and hastily fortified that the Germans called it the Alessandria of straw, arrested for four months the march of the emperor, and gave the confederation time to assemble troops. When the emperor, obliged to burn his camp, turned in the direction of Pavia, he found the towns guarded by superior forces. But an engagement did not then take place and a truce was concluded. The quarrel, however, could not be peacefully decided. On the 29th May, 1176, the great battle of Legnano was fought; a battle which has been called the first victory of modern freedom over the resuscitated despotism of Rome, and compared to Marathon. The Germans at first had a decided advantage and penetrated near to the caroccio of Milan, which was borne in the midst of the army. But two companies of Milanese, called
